Running With the Devil
by WritePassion
Summary: An introspective piece speculating on what might have been going through Sam's head when Rebecca kidnapped him.


**Running With the Devil**

By WritePassion

I didn't have much of a choice when Rebecca held the gun at an angle that would have killed me instantly if I fought or tried to make a break for it. She was running scared and not thinking clearly, and I was just a convenient hostage that at some point would be more trouble than I was worth. I didn't hold out too much hope of being rescued alive. But in the time I had left, I would do my best to make it count.

In my career, I learned to turn adversity into an opportunity. Up until that point, we knew very little about Anson. Rebecca was his gun hand, so she had to know more than we did. If I could keep her from blowing my head off, maybe I could get some answers. I don't like to brag, but I have a talent for sweet talking the ladies, and even though she was a little young for me, I never turn down a challenge to tempt a member of the female side of our species.

Rebecca turned in the front seat and her blue eyes were as cold as ice. The scowl on her face told me she wasn't ready for the Sam Axe charm yet, so I would bide my time and figure out how to give Mike a trail to follow. She zip-tied me to the steering wheel and I gave her a look.

"Really, do we have to do this?"

"Yes. I'm not taking any chances with you."

"I'm not the one you should be worrying about. What about Anson? I'm just a guy trying to help my friend right a wrong. Is that so bad?"

Her cheek twitched. "I really don't care."

"What do you want, Rebecca? You know, if you told me, maybe I could help..."

"Shut up! Just shut up and drive!" She held the gun up, the barrel close enough for a bullet to take off my nose, and pretty much the rest of my face, if I didn't obey. "You're doing that right now, driving. That's all I want you to do."

She was nervous, coming off the adrenaline from sneaking into a guy's house and shooting him in cold blood. Why did Anson send her to do his dirty work? I knew at least half a dozen slimy characters in the Miami area that would do it for free, just for the thrill of it. As the miles passed and she sat beside me with a wild look in her eyes, I wondered how far out she planned this. I guessed not very. Once we barged in on her little killing party, everything changed.

"You know, you could have taken off while we were in the house and we never would have caught up to you," I spoke with a soft, almost sympathetic sounding voice.

Her reply was forced and tense. "No. Michael would have chased me down and captured me."

I glanced at her for a moment. Her voice wavered a little and I knew the signs. She was confused, shaken, and scared because nothing was going according to plan. She hadn't spent any time with Michael Westen. If she had, she'd know that events going sideways were a normal part of our day. If I managed to keep her talking, I could break the ice and find a way to convince her to stop this game of cat and mouse.

"Where are we going? You know, if we keep up on this road we'll run out of everglades and hit the freeway." I used that voice again, no condemnation but the tone of a friend.

"I... I don't know. If you'd shut up for more than five seconds, I could figure this out," Rebecca snapped and pressed deeper into her side of the car. "Up there, pull over."

I saw an open space white with sand. When I parked, I was relieved that the tires didn't sink into it. "Okay, now what?"

"I'm going to do a little car shopping," she replied as she opened the door.

"No! Wait a minute. You start dumping bodies on the highway, people are gonna notice." Never mind the fact that the road we were on was very lightly traveled and no one had passed us for miles.

"Well then, what do you suggest?" She sneered at me and looked mean and angry enough to just put a bullet in me at that moment and get it over with. Things weren't working the way I'd hoped, but I never let that stop me from trying.

"I've got an idea, but you'll have to cut me free of these zip ties." My eyes met hers, and I could see the struggle within. She didn't trust me and no doubt expected me to run for the brush the second she released me from the steering wheel. As much as I wanted to get away, my duty lay with staying and learning what I could. "Trust me, Rebecca. I'm not going anywhere."

"Damn right you're not, because if you try to run, I'll shoot you immediately." Her eyes were on me the entire time she snapped the plastic ties with her small knife.

I kept eye contact with her as I rubbed my wrists and gave her a sheepish grin. "Not exactly my kind of jewelry, you know?" I chuckled, but her face didn't crack. "Okay, you stay here, keep an eye on me, and for God's sake, don't go waving that gun around. Nobody'll stop if you don't get a grip on yourself!" I got out of the car, slammed the door, and stood straddling the center of the road after creating a flat tire to make things look good.

I heard a motor in the distance approaching from where we'd come, and I breathed a little sigh of relief. I saw the forest green pickup with a cap coming closer, and from what I could tell there was only one guy in it. That was good. I didn't want a whole bunch of hostages for Rebecca to get spooked over and start shooting. She was on the edge of something bigger than she knew how to deal with. At some point she was going to crash, and if I could remain calm and conserve my energy, work at her icy front, I could eventually convince her to trust me.

Each step of the way, Rebecca's wild ride seemed to spiral further out of control and she was getting more desperate with each failure. It didn't faze me. I waited patiently, knowing that eventually she would crack and either kill me or ask for help. I was betting on the latter. My voice of reason and strategic wisdom seemed to hold some weight until we came upon the secret meth lab, where she thought that strapping a pack full of C4 to my back and threatening the meth lab workers with death was a good idea. I was starting to think I'd gambled and lost.

Rebecca tied me to a pole while she went to check on the airboats, and I still had the C4 on my back with her holding the detonator in her left hand, nearly crushing it. All she had to do from where she stood was flip the switch and I would be a dead man. At the moment, however, she was too busy looking for a way out.

The zip tie was too tight for me to wriggle out of, but I could reach the phone I slipped off a table in the lab during all the shooting. I knew Mike's number by heart and called it. I was amazed at how calmly I related the directions to our location, because the specter of death loomed over me like a stormy sky and Mike was my only hope. I thought of Elsa. I didn't need to glance at my watch to know I was late for dinner, and if things played out the way I feared, I would never make it at all.

I had been with a lot of women over the years. Only a handful of times did I say, "I love you" and really mean it. Only one did I truly love, and she didn't know it. I dialed the number, hoping Elsa would answer, but I got her voicemail. So typical. I wanted to cry, but instead I poured out my message and ended with, "I love you, Baby." There, I'd said it. A weight slipped off my chest, but another took its place on my back along with the C4. I shouldn't have told Elsa how I felt. Better for her to not have known and faced my death without that revelation, than to live with the knowledge of what might have been.

"What, now you're talking to other girls? I thought we had something special."

I turned and found Rebecca standing behind me with the gun pointed at my head. I didn't expect the look of betrayal in her eyes, the kind of look a woman gives a man for cheating on her. With one innocent phone call I destroyed any chance of building her trust.

"You told her where we are?"

"No. I... I just called to say goodbye," I answered with a hitch in my voice. I didn't bother to tell her about the call to Mike, because that would have earned me a bullet for sure.

Rebecca's face was like the valve on a pressure cooker, turning red and ready to blow. "That's it. I've got transportation, now I'm getting out of here."

"You know how to drive one of those things? I do," I volunteered.

"No! I mean, yes, I can handle it myself." All emotion wiped off her face and the gun came up to within inches of my nose. "You're not coming along, Sam. It's the end of the line for you."

She hesitated, and I thought she was either second-guessing herself or hoping I would put on some pathetic display pleading for my life. I wouldn't let her have the satisfaction. If I looked weak, any respect I'd earned would go flying out the window and she wouldn't have any qualms about shooting me. But I could see her bottom lip quivering ever so slightly, a move I'd seen before. She was fighting with herself again.

"You don't want to do this," I said in a soft, calm voice. "You can just leave, disappear, and we'll never find you."

"Shut up! Shut up, Sam!" She blinked like a strobe light and the gun wavered, but it never moved far enough away to be less than dangerous.`

My eyes wandered to the finger hovering over the trigger. It slipped into the guard and in slow motion moved to squeeze the trigger. Could she make the moment last any longer? I looked into her eyes again, her cold blues locked on me. Her finger moved to the point of no return, but as the explosion rocked the air around us, I felt something whizzing past my ear. I didn't realize that I'd blinked in that nanosecond. When I opened my eyes, Rebecca looked angry again. From deep inside she released a shriek born of frustration, and the butt of the gun came down. She used all her strength to hit me, and I dropped to the ground, unconscious. At least I wasn't dead.

Everything after that was like being on a speeding train heading for a broken rail. Mike and Jesse showed up and I woke up disoriented. The look on Mike's face, when I could see it, reminded me of a little boy who was afraid he would lose his most beloved friend. But I was alive and kicking, the backpack bomb was missing, and so was Rebecca. A sense of failure washed over me as Mike helped me to my feet. I'd hoped to reach inside and get to the bottom of her motivation. She told me about her brother Trent being at Anson's mercy, and I could understand how love for her brother drove her to this. But Rebecca had gone beyond it, and her desire to flee had taken on a sense of reckless desperation.

"I tried to stop her, Mike. She must have taken off on one of those airboats." On my feet, the world spun around me. After a few steps I found my equilibrium and Mike let me go to lean against the Charger.

But she hadn't taken off in the airboat. Jesse followed it and found it running without a pilot. In the meantime, Rebecca threatened to take out both Mike and me with her bomb. She was on the ledge, out of options, and she was close enough to the blast range to kill herself, but she didn't care anymore. Her mind was scrambled by the hopelessness of her situation. I'm still not sure how we managed to talk her down. Somehow Mike was able to convince her that we wanted to help get her and Trent out from under Anson's powerful thumb. When she dropped the detonator, we all took a nice, deep breath.

Jesse returned and the four of us drove back to Miami. I sat in the back with Rebecca, and for most of the trip she sat as far away from me as possible, her face turned toward the window, not moving a muscle. Over the road noise I could have sworn I heard a sniffle now and then. It got dark on the way home, so I couldn't see if she was crying or not.

Mike took us to the loft and everyone cleaned up. We ordered a pizza. It was pretty late and I really wanted to go see Elsa, to assure her that I wasn't dead, but I felt like I had some unfinished business with Rebecca. She came out of the bathroom wearing some of the clothes we retrieved from her car on the way to Miami. Her eyes locked on mine, and I tilted my head toward the balcony. She looked confused, but she followed me outside and parked herself on the steps leading to the rooftop.

I leaned close to her and spoke softly. "It's okay, Rebecca. I know you won't believe it, but I understand."

"How can you," she asked in a rough, shaky voice.

"I've been there, in a situation that seems impossible to get out of without someone you love dying." I really hoped that I wouldn't have to tell her, because even after all this time, it was still painful. Maybe that was why I understood her so well.

"I don't know what you want me to say. Sorry? Thanks for rescuing me?" So defensive. If I wasn't careful, she would go berserk again. "You should have just left me out there to fend for myself, because when Anson finds out what happened, he'll kill Trent and me."

"I want to tell you a little story, and I think you'll find it interesting." I replied as I took slow, even steps, grabbed a chair at the cafe table, and dragged it to the staircase. I straddled it, resting my arms on the back.

She didn't say anything smart or rebuff my declaration, so I began to tell her about the time I was in Eastern Europe. I couldn't give her specifics, of course, since it was all classified. But I gave her enough to see my point.

"I fell in love with an East German girl named Marta. Since I was being entrenched for awhile, I had to blend in, and I spent a lot of time at the local pub. It was a great place to pick up on what was happening. Anyway, I met Marta there. We spent a lot of time together, and one thing led to another until we... became more intimate." I paused, my mind racing, part of me wanting to stuff all these memories back into the recesses of my mind and never bring them out again. "I got in too deep with her, Rebecca, and I... I put down my guard enough to let some things slip."

"She found out who you really were," Rebecca deduced.

"Yeah. And I put myself in a position where she betrayed me, I messed up a big operation we had going there, and my mistake almost killed some of my own people." I took a deep breath. "This was serious. I'd basically destroyed my career and I could have wound up in prison for a really long time. I was thinking that death was a better option."

I had her attention now. The overhead light cast strange shadows, but she locked onto my eyes and studied me. "Obviously, you didn't take that route."

"I was ready to throw everything away, what was left of my career, my life… but my friend, well, he was more a mentor than a friend, he bailed me out. It's classified, of course. Just suffice it to say that he gave me an out. Unfortunately, it involved setting up Marta, and I… I…." My breath rushed out in a ragged sigh, and I rubbed my eyes to rid them of the moisture that collected in them, then wiped my face as if I could dislodge the guilt.

She asked in a voice as soft as a whisper, "What did you do, Sam?"

I shook my head and I could only reply, "I had no choice. Only one of us made it out of that room alive."

"I'm sorry." With her head bowed and her eyes still on mine, her sentiment appeared to be genuine.

"Yeah, me too. So you see, I know what it's like to be in a situation where there's no good option."

"Your ending turned out differently than mine will," she said, and she shifted on the step.

I pointed at her and said, "We don't know that yet. I promised you we would help you."

"I know." A sad smile crossed her lips. "I love my brother so much, Sam. More than anything."

"I promise you, Rebecca, we're not gonna let anything bad happen. We'll find Trent and get him some protection, and if you work with us, we'll get Anson." I leaned my arms on the chair back, getting closer to her. "We've all made mistakes in the past, but what matters now is we all have a common enemy. We'll do whatever it takes to get him. I swear it."

Rebecca nodded, slow and with conviction. "Thank you, Sam." Her smile turned to one of hope, the first ray of sweetness I'd seen out of her. "I'm glad I didn't shoot you."

"Or blow me up with those meth heads."

She snickered. "That too." She turned serious and leaned forward to touch my arm. "You really think you guys can do this?"

I sensed her warmth and the soft beat of her pulse through the veins on the back of her hand when I squeezed it with mine. "Trust me."

"It's hard for me to trust anyone."

"Give it time." I released her hand and stood, and I slid the chair back to the table. "If you're okay here tonight, I'm going to get back to the hotel. Before you bashed me in the head, I left a very disturbing message for my lady. I need to go show her I'm okay. 'Night, Rebecca."

She seemed surprised but quickly recovered and said, "Night, Sam."

After saying goodnight to Mike and Jesse, who were working on something at the breakfast bar, I exited the loft and trotted down the stairs to my car. Part of me wanted to go back and keep watch over Rebecca. The other part of me that dared to trust her knew that my friends would be fine with her, and she with them.

Rebecca stood at the top of the stairs and said, "Be careful out there. We'll see you tomorrow?"

"Count on it."

The positive tone in her voice was refreshing considering the way our day started. With a lighter heart, I went to the hotel to patch things up with Elsa, knowing it would be a lot easier than what I'd been through running with the devil.


End file.
